


Tragedy and Comedy

by commas_and_ampersands



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/M, pretentious literature references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 01:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16754953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commas_and_ampersands/pseuds/commas_and_ampersands
Summary: "You are mean.""Yes.""The meanest boyfriend in the history of all time and space.""So you tell me."





	Tragedy and Comedy

**Author's Note:**

> Written March 2010, some edits November 2017.

Minako releases a long, tragic sigh from the couch.  Kunzite looks up over the edge of his book, quirking an eyebrow at her posture.  
  
"You know, the homework might not be so torturous if you didn't read it upside down."  
  
Minako sticks her tongue out at him.  "You are mean."

"Yes."

"The meanest boyfriend in the history of all time and space."  
  
"So you tell me."  
  
"You are even meaner than my sadist of a professor who makes me read in Greek."  
  
Realizing that he is not likely to return to his own book any time soon, he slips in his bookmark and sets it aside.  "Is he really making you read in Greek?"  
  
She gives him what she supposes is a withering look.  She'd have a better chance if she were upright, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.  " **NO...**  but it might as well be."  
  
Recognizing this for the request for help that it is, he silently holds out his hand.  She grins and tosses it at him, a little more forceful from her precarious angle but still with good aim.  He glances at the cover.  " _Aristotle's Poetics_ , hm?"  
  
"You're read it, right?" she asks, pulling herself up effortlessly.  Not for the first time, he is thankful for her core strength.  "I mean, you're like Ami.  You've basically read everything."  
  
Kunzite pictures the face Ami must make when Minako tells her this.  His imagination conjures something truly hysterical, and he resolves to measure it against reality as soon as possible.  " _Everything_  is an overstatement, but I have read this, yes."  
  
She points at the offending tome and demands, "Explain."  
  
"I'm sure you understand more than you think you do."  
  
"I understand that it is boring and old."  
  
"Not helpful."  
  
She gives another tragic sigh, momentarily blowing her bangs skyward.  "Have I mentioned that you are the meanest meanie who ever did mean?"  
  
"Once or twice."  
  
She flops forward on the couch, laying on her stomach and kicking her heels up.   "Well, he puts tragedy above comedy.  Which is stupid and wrong."  
  
"Why is it stupid and wrong?  And if you say, 'because,' I'm going back to my book."  
  
Minako grins, smug and bright and beautiful.  Then again, he's hard-pressed to recall a time when he hasn't thought her beautiful.  "Well, I wasn't going to say that, so ha-ha, joke's on you.  I  _was_  going to say that he's stupid and wrong because comedy is  _obviously_  better than tragedy."  
  
Kunzite refrains from pointing out that this is not much better than 'because' by sheer strength of will.  
  
Her eyes suddenly slide away from him, and she begins braiding the ends of her hair.  It's an uncommon gesture from her, a habit that only seems to surface when she's wearing a certain shade of insecurity and self-consciousness.  She's so rarely anything but outrageously confident that the posture always takes him aback.  "I mean, I get what he means about catharsis: that sometimes people need to cry about bad things happening to fake people so that they can cry about stuff happening to them in real life.  I just don't think that's really helpful.  
  
"See, I think when people are sad, they'd rather laugh.  Like, say my mother just died.  No wait, bad example, I hate my mother.  Say you're a random person whose dog just died.  Do you really want to go see a play where EVERYBODY dies, and you cry about them dying, but really you're just crying about your dog?  I think you'd much rather go see a comedy so you could just forget about it for awhile.  You're happy during the play and maybe for a little while after.  Heck, maybe its the first step towards you being okay with your dog being gone, I don't know."  
  
She shrugs. "I'd just rather make people happy.  It's part of the reason I want to become an actress in the first place.  I don't want people to cry when they see me.  I want them to smile.  Is that wrong?"

One day, she's going to have those fans she craves.  Kunzite can't say if she'll have a small, dedicated following, or if she'll be a household name.  No one can predict the whimsies and fickle nature of the entertainment industry.  But every inch of him is certain that if love could be quantified, placed on a set of scales and measured, they would tilt in his favor every time.  And it's exactly because of moments like this.

"No.  I don't think that's wrong."  
  
She smiles, dazzling and painful like a star, nervous hair-twisting abandoned. "I take it back.  You're the nicest, best boyfriend who ever lived."  She leans forward and kisses him on the cheek.  She's a tactile person, and even more tactile lover, but even after months of being together, he still leans into her touch like a flower starved of the sun.  She lingers a moment longer than she might otherwise, because she knows.

"I appreciate the promotion," he says with convincing sincerity.

"Too bad Professor I-Wish-Aristotle-Was-My-Zombie-Husband-Because-He-Is-So-Perfect-And-Right-In-Every-Way will not agree.  Tell me again why agreed to go to drama school?"  
  
"It was the only way your mother would let you move out."  
  
She rolls her eyes, and this time he does not miss the wicked glint.  "No.  Really.  Remind me."  
  
He smirks. "If you insist."  
  
She giggles and launches herself at him, landing lightly astride his lap.  Her fingers are splayed across his back, and she smells like lemons and sunshine.  He kisses her, runs his hands through her hair until he's undone every braid.  He allows himself to be happy.  
  
"It could be worse, you know," he says after awhile, pulling away to nuzzle at her neck.  
  
Her breath catches when he nips at her skin.  "How?"  
  
"You could have to read Cicero."

**Author's Note:**

> So for context: I majored in Writing and Literature at college, and one class required for both concentrations was Classical Rhetoric. This included reading Aristotle and Cicero, along with Plato and a few others. Aristotle was my favorite because I had the easiest time understanding it, and I was a wayward theatre kid who had heard some of that before. But Cicero? Fuck that unit right in the ear.
> 
> Anyway, my way of coping with this was forcing Minako to read some of what I had to read. And you know, I've killed her, beaten her up, made her kill people she loves, made her watch people she loves die, and a whole host of other terrible things in fanfiction. This may have been me at my cruelest.


End file.
